


the beat and beating heart

by hitlikehammers



Series: Cardiophilia Sequence [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cardiophilia, Character Study, Erogenous Zones, Heartbeat Kink, Human Anatomy, Introspection, M/M, Music, Neck Fetishization, Pulse Sucking, Pulsepoint Kink, Romance, Violins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Sherlock can’t play, can’t compose the way he once did, not now. Not in this brave new world of John Hamish Watson and the muscle in his chest.</i> Or: where Sherlock continues to fixate on John's heartbeat, and deems his lips to be the best means of collecting data on the pulse at John's neck; John, in turn, has a few questions, after his flatmate decides to tongue at his carotid pulse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the beat and beating heart (sweeter still)

**Author's Note:**

> Follows **[suddenly your heart showed me my way](http://archiveofourown.org/works/411375)** , but stands on its own.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sherlock can’t play, can’t compose the way he once did, not now. Not in this brave new world of John Hamish Watson and the muscle in his chest._ Or: where Sherlock continues to fixate on John's heartbeat, and deems his lips to be the best means of collecting data on the pulse at John's neck. (Follows **[suddenly your heart showed me my way](http://archiveofourown.org/works/411375)** )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My ongoing thanks to the stellar [](http://togoboldly.livejournal.com/profile)[**togoboldly**](http://togoboldly.livejournal.com/) for the Britpicking and the idea bouncing. Title credit to [Toni Morrison](http://books.google.com/books?id=ZYKKN752Y0QC&q=beating+heart#v=onepage&q&f=false).

For as long as he can remember, despite _everything_ , the Music has been his refuge; his escape.

When Sherlock composes, when he takes to his instrument and smells the pine of the rosin close at hand, more immediate than cold tea and human perspiration, soap and the tang of bile from the gallbladder in the sink—above the hints of John’s cheap cologne and the burnt bits off Mrs. Hudson’s biscuits; when Sherlock makes _music_ , his mind is ruled by something consuming, something powerful and base, something eloquent, evasive, coy and maddening, and it sings in his blood louder than anything else, a mistress more demanding and irascible than the Work, quicker and driven deeper than the Chase. When the Music is there, it overcomes the static. It grounds him. It makes the empty places seem shallow; the gaps surmountable—the craving that colours the whole of his insula, that makes it vibrate and grimace and shake through his body; the music makes the craving settle and hum, if not quite softer, then at least at a manageable tempo, a reasonable pitch.

Except that’s not quite true, is it? The music doesn’t calm him, hasn’t calmed him; doesn’t fill him with that momentary still. If he were in the proper frame of mind, he’d be able to evaluate the facts as they stand, would enumerate the collected data and run the proper analyses in his head, scan for patterns and correlations and emerge with the appropriate coefficients within an acceptable range of statistical significance to support his claim, but he isn’t. In a proper frame of mind.

And the truth is that he hasn’t been for weeks now; no—for _months_. And perhaps ‘proper’ isn’t the most accurate term, but wherever he is, whatever’s gone wrong, or topside-up or round-and-round the sodding garden until the shapes warp and the colours bleed: whatever’s _happened_ , Sherlock can’t rationalise what he knows, cannot justify the _why_. It’s something intrinsic, true in the bones of him, writ in the marrow and Sherlock feels it shiver through him, this knowing that he can’t deduce, unsettling and new, unquestionable, unacceptable: he wonders how this knowledge managed to seep so fully, how it taught him so thoroughly—unnoticed—how best to be a fool.

He swallows around the juggernaut of pressure, the pulse of force and strength and feeling that’s pure idiocy and weakness and frail-fragile _failure_ where it shows itself in the red flush at his neck. He ponders the size of an artery, the diameter: the sheer velocity that is required to make it surge strong enough to vibrate, to press through his neck against the chinrest, to cause him to reposition his hold just a touch, to shift the central expression of his selfhood just so.

And that’s the key, really, the fly in the ointment, the flutter in his gut. The Music was everything, his foundation and his release, his one retreat that never judged, that never ran, that never asked for more than he was willing to offer, more than he was capable of mustering to give. Before, the music stayed him when even he could not balance his steps. Before, the music was the only reason he had for counting the beats of anything, for measuring motion and meter and break and pause in turn. Before, there was no need to save anything more than the incidental count of a living human heart—a suspect’s guilt beneath the heel of a palm—because living hearts were inconsequential, irrelevant; there was no need to commit to memory that the maximum heart rate for a healthy human male of a given age stands around one hundred and eighty-one beats to the minute, but Sherlock’s well aware there’s room for error. Before, there was only the count and the measure, the clef and the notes, and the only kind of feeling that was necessary, that he cared a whit for at all lay scrawled above the staff in italics, bold. Simple.

That’s not true anymore.

And it’s peculiar—not in the sense that it’s irreducible, or that the facts betray untruth; more in the sense that it’s unfamiliar, untenable, and absolutely indefensible—but Sherlock can’t play, can’t compose the way he once did, not now. Not in this brave new world of John Hamish Watson and the muscle in his chest and the world at large as static and transport.

Because from the very first time he rosined his bow, from the first indentations of strings on his flesh, transfiguring the curls of his fingerprints: from the outset, Sherlock composed on his own terms, in his own way, crafting notes around the metronome that’s never ceased, that is cased in his ribs and pulses away, always present, always ready, never hasty, always calm. He’s played largos and adagios, produced sonatas concertos and he’s coaxed the lingering, most protracted moans from his violin with ease, with the steady conductor counting time in his blood, around his bones. He’s never needed to question, never had to count on anything beyond himself to bring the music forth; no hands but his crafted those sounds, made them soar: the fingers and the wrists and the fist clutched beneath the sternum. The Music was always his own.

And yet he finds something curious, something unnerving and paradigm-shifting in the stumble of his own heart, here and now, in the universe where John’s heart keeps time and sings louder than the birds or the traffic or the heavy rush of blood when Sherlock thinks on all the brushes, the beats: a hand at the wrist between texting and tea, the pump at the skin, at the line of his brow after a gunshot, after a moment when the world ceased to be, all at once, for the possibility of losing its rhythm, its reason and rhyme.

Sherlock plays most often near John, now—perhaps _for_ John: it was difficult, a process, but Sherlock has come to terms as best he can with the way in which John is tangled with the Music now, just as he permeates the Work. Yet this tentative, hesitant peace was one he could only strike on the condition that _he_ maintained the eyes, the mind that connected the clues, that wove together the data; on the circumstance that he would keep the time and set the tempo and his pulse would stay steady, save for the occasional anomaly: the periodic gun pressed to the base of a skull, or the unthinkable Semtex with chlorine and too little oxygen, breathing that stops being boring because it can’t _be_ at _all_.

These were the conditions. These were acceptable, if not ideal. They were concessions that Sherlock was willing to make.

Yet as it stands, he’s been collecting data on his own heart rate for the last three weeks, now—secondary, of course, to John’s, because the information he is amassing on John is essential, is crucial and his own is merely peripheral; but he’s been recording his own pulse for twenty-one days, more than enough to draw conclusions, make generalisations that may as well be facts.

In the presence of one John Watson, Sherlock’s pulse has yet to drop below ninety beats per minutes, at its slowest.

The fastest pace it’s reached in similar circumstances, well; Sherlock doesn’t deem that information to be relevant. 

What _is_ relevant, however, is the fact that Sherlock can’t play anything more woeful than _andante_ without feeling an uncomfortable itch beneath his skin, between the layers. He tries, but it sounds all wrong, off balance, unnatural, like he’s forcing the slow dive, the gentle slide of the waves through the air. It clenches in his jaw, puts pressure between his molars and causes his head to ache: it’s uncanny, unfathomable, but there are boundaries, now, that were never there before. He is no longer unfettered, he is no longer the master of this instrument, no longer the servant and the partner and the player of the Music, untamed. He is a slave instead to electrical currents, to valve openings and contractions, to four chambers cased close beneath his twenty-four ribs.

To a collective _eight_ chambers, beneath a pair of forty-eight bones.

So Sherlock’s stoking, urging the strings to convey the tale buried, laced and coated in the final movement of Mendelssohn’s concerto— _Mendelssohn_ , dear god, what kind of creature is Sherlock becoming, who is the man who has come to wear his flesh and call it home?—and it is wild, it is swift and he plays it, again and again until his bow hand aches, the muscles unused to such fervour; until his fingertips feel numb, creased with the lines of the strings he’s been loving, abusing, adoring and despising for minutes, hours: the sun’s position is difficult to read from this angle and he’s oddly breathless, consumed with a madness he cannot keep still, cannot bottle or bury; can’t contain or deny.

His heart is thrumming—he takes a moment to count it, one-thirty-seven and holding—and he’s gasping, just a bit, and it’s more than the Music, he knows this, knows it clearly when he realises John’s watching him, still sitting in the chair with his laptop in his lap, precariously balanced; closed now, where it was opened when he began. Sherlock hadn't noticed the absence of the deliberate-careful peck of John’s fingers, uncoordinated—dare he suggest endearing?—on the keyboard, sketching out a story, one of so many for the world to consume. Sherlock meets his eyes, meets them and falls a little, his grip on the violin tightening and loosening and it’s one-thirty-seven, now, and rising.

Rising.

The light shifts: late afternoon, he deems, and it has been _hours_ , and John simply doesn’t type that slowly. The position of John’s body, his frame; the angle of his face, the turn of his neck—Sherlock’s eyes narrow, his breath catches: he can see John’s pulse at the side of his throat, powerful, obvious even to ordinary eyes and sewn like perfection into the fabric of Sherlock’s observations, Sherlock’s desperate need to _know_. Sherlock wants to shrink, needs more than anything to become small, to be dissolved into nothing and injected into John’s veins, to exist inside the beat and move, progressing only because John’s heart forces him, drives him through an endless loop, an eternal Chase of John, John, _John_. Sherlock wants to linger, to pass small and slow from John’s mouth to the pharynx, down into his oesophagus, tricking his epiglottis into granting him entrance and he wants to stay there, colliding with the beat outside like a touch, a caress, a physical blow. Sherlock wants to consume John and feel that drumming burst long and endless from the centre, the core of him.

Sherlock watches, times the blinking of his eyes with the push of the arterial wall against that perpetually, impossibly sun-kissed flesh: one-hundred and nine beats to the minute. That heart pounding more than once, almost twice every second—some twisted, primal sort of promise in the tempo that conducts him, that commands his motion, compels Sherlock deeper, more fully than the squeeze of the muscle in his own chest: the heart _out_ of him always more powerful, always the key. It feels like a crime, the worst sort of all that Sherlock’s borne witness to across so many years—it’s a crime that he can’t know, that he cannot possess and save and _keep_ that wondrous _beat_.

And if Sherlock is anything, _anything_ , he is a detective: he is predisposed to resolving injustices, such as this.

He takes a step, and then another; he lays his instrument across the cushion of his chair and he sucks in a breath when his wrist goes limp, when his steps grow steady, careful but hurried because he sees the blood moving, pushing quicker. He sees it shiver like a starburst when John swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing frantically, pressure on all sides save one and Sherlock wants to contain it, to own and inspect it, to memorise it and write it into his hard drive, to devote balconies and antechambers and throne rooms in the Palace to this ever-present, never-ending, pressing-perfect beat.

John doesn’t move, though his eyes are wide from where he sits, where he looks up at Sherlock when the distance’s been closed, when Sherlock’s toes hit the feet of the chair and keep him, stop him. He leans, crouches, kneels, and John remains still, inert except for all that motion beneath the surface, and Sherlock watches for a moment as he frames his hands on the arms of the chair, holds himself in place: he watches the rise and fall of John’s chest beneath his champagne-coloured jumper and imagines he can see the jump of the heart at the apex. He lets himself do the unthinkable, then; allows himself the indulgence, the reprieve of imaging the feel, the tangible rush he could touch and see and taste at the aorta, in the pulmonic area, all the intercostal spaces and the at the tricuspid, the mitral area, each a different set of data, each a new revelation to be added to his compendium, the collection of details about one fragile life beneath the cosmos that began to _matter_ without Sherlock even noticing; that burned with every push of a heart Sherlock long suspected had shrivelled in himself, merely transport; that revealed itself, suddenly, as the sun in the only solar system Sherlock deems fit to recall.

Sherlock takes a moment to reassert control, composure, allows himself to notice the facts rather than be driven blindly, stupidly by sentiment alone. He takes John in, sees the subtle glow of sweat on his skin. Knuckles white, clenched on the arms of the chair just above—an awkward angle, uncomfortable—but far enough from Sherlocks’s own, John’s palms farther down. The pupils: dilated, telling, and Sherlock is inordinately glad there is no mirror, here; that he can’t muster the acuity to read his own eyes in the sheen of John’s, to see the same unequivocal evidence of feeling encroaching on his irises, opening and baring what lies beneath, showing the red squeeze of blood and meat in the chest of him: one-fifty-nine, like running a marathon, chasing a killer, awaiting the end.

Embarking on a beginning. Risking all things.

Sherlock reaches, lifts his hand and watches as John just breathes, and there’s heat between them, so much that it takes Sherlock aback, suddenly; makes him shiver imperceptibly, trembling beneath the surface so that his organs seems shuffled, unsettled: his blood sent surging backward, weightless, light and dizzy. He reaches, but then refrains, freezes in midair as his digits reach for the beat, aching to complete the circle and grasp the last clues, to resolve the mystery that’s eating at the viscera within him, bit by sour bit. His fingertips are compromised, still bent, warped with the weft of the strings and the edge of the bow. They aren’t trustworthy, can’t be as precise as he needs. He can’t risk partial truth in this, not _this_. He _won’t_.

There is truly only one alternative, if somatotopy can be trusted, if the cortical homunculus is accurately drawn.

Sherlock meets John’s eyes and sucks in air—boring, tedious, but it tastes of John this close and that is _fascinating_ —and he leans, eyes sliding closed as his palm rests on John’s sternum for balance, as his mouth makes contact with John’s neck.

Sherlock processes the full host of the human capacity for taste upon contact, in the instant, the improbable piece of a second that passes before the first revelatory beat: there’s sweetness, and the salty lick of perspiration; there’s a bitterness, a sour undercoating from the day that’s passed, collected there since his last shower, and then something savoury, something undefinable and oh-so-very _John_ , like warm butter and buckwheat honey and the indescribable tang of tears that Sherlock hasn’t shed since he held his mother on her deathbed and could give nothing else, could offer her no deeper part of himself than this concession, this weakness and trust in water and despair and deep, deep _feeling_ , the likes of which he’s kept locked away ever since.

And then it hits, pulses into the pout of his lips like a freight train and an impact, the dive off a rooftop and a collision of chests when the unstoppable force meets its immovable match. Sherlock can’t help it, when it happens; his lips part, and maybe he sighs, and his tongue slips out between the gap, reaches and dares, _dares_ to _touch_. Against the tip, he is certain, absolutely _certain_ that he can measure the systole and the diastole, that he can feel the contractions and the valvular motion, can read the intensity and the absolute energy, the surge of life and death and he wishes, terrible and wonderful and wretched, that a way existed for him to crawl inside John’s chest cavity and lick at the ventricles themselves, to touch and taste the way they quiver and to fall, to find oblivion beneath the unrelenting thud.

In lieu of that, however, this moment—the unending rush of blood and the push-give-take-pause, the _pause_ until Sherlock aches with need and anxiety and anticipation and relief when it picks back up to give and take and push again, so predictable that he wants to trust in it, but so unknowable and infinite and precious to a fault that Sherlock can’t count on it—not _yet_ ; in lieu of _being_ that heart himself—inextricable—this kiss of beating, burning existence, this dire testament to the life, the life, the _life_ of John H. Watson, will suffice.

He doesn’t realise he’s tonguing, lapping, _sucking_ at the beat, doesn’t consciously perceive that he’s running the blunt edges of his teeth down John’s pulsating neck; he doesn't process what he’s actually doing until the thrum gets sideswiped, becomes dislodged by the vibration of John’s vocal cords into something like a moan, a _moan_ and then he tightens, stiffens, pulls back just enough. There’s a pop at the loss of contact, of suction, and Sherlock’s reeling, still caught in the rapid circulation of blood through John’s veins, quivering with the heavy-hurried coursing of plasma and proteins and ions and life, and Sherlock’s dizzy, he’s _dizzy_ and it’s music as he’s never known it, lighting up the insula that grips him so and telling him, whispering hateful and sure that this is new, this is unprecedented: he has never known, will never know, addiction quite like this.

“Sherlock,” John exhales, and Sherlock feels it, tastes it even with a hairsbreadth between his lips and the skin. It rumbles like the floorboards under his feet before the fall, the shiver of glass as the kettle boils; it tastes of salt and fermenting cherries, of fog over the Thames before the city stirs and sun-smoked sand. Sherlock knows the word is more than just the letters, more than just a name, a call; a warning, even. Sherlock knows that it’s a question, the inquiry of _What is this?_ , _What are you playing at?_ , _What brought this on?_ , _Who **are** you?_ , _Are you alright?_ , _What does this mean?_ , and maybe even _Is your heart shaking just now, does it feel like it might fall from the arteries holding it firm, if I leaned in and licked up the line of your throat and mouthed secrets and obscenities and the dark truths of life itself into the hollow between your clavicles, if I kissed the sweet surge of your heart just the same, what would you **do**?_

That might be wishful thinking. That might be dementia, delirium, insanity.

Sherlock can’t be sure.

What he _is_ sure of, though, is that he wants to taste that word, that name, _his_ name; he wants to taste that word and everything it may or may not mean on John’s _lips_ , wants it more than any other thing in the whole of all existence, in that instant. 

In more than just that instant.

He leans back in and sees John’s eyes, notes their colour and the clear way they gleam and anticipates the beat that’s driving him, that’s conducting this raucous symphonic mellifluous mess when he leans into John’s sweet-swollen lips, and touches, trembles.

 _Tastes_.

 

 


	2. the beat and beating heart (love that too)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _John dreams of heartbeats, more often than not._ In which John has a few questions, after his flatmate decides to tongue at his carotid pulse. (Part II of the Cardiophilia Sequence; Follows **[suddenly your heart showed me my way](http://hitlikehammers.livejournal.com/165858.html#cutid1)** )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For my dearest [](http://togoboldly.livejournal.com/profile)[**togoboldly**](http://togoboldly.livejournal.com/). My thanks to the unutterably brilliant [](http://speak-me-fair)[**speak_me_fair**](http://speak-me-fair) for the Britpicking and beta-work that tightened this up ever-so-nicely. Title credit to [Toni Morrison](http://books.google.com/books?id=ZYKKN752Y0QC&q=beating+heart#v=onepage&q&f=false).

John dreams of heartbeats, more often than not.

There’s the desert, of course: there’s adrenaline and fear and exertion and running, and the way his feet would pound the ground out of sync with his blood and oddly, that was often the only thing he remembered once his finger left the trigger. 

There’s the surge of life against his fingertips as it struggles, as it seeps out between the cracks and fades when he’s not fast enough, not strong enough to hold the red inside the veins with his own two hands, not _good_ enough to save anything, in the end. 

There’s the tactless beep of the ECG: patients lost and saved because of him, and both haunt him in the night, somehow—that’s probably wrong, really; there’s something a bit off about that. 

There’s the memory of his hands around wrists: his father’s, finding nothing; his sister’s, finding something sluggish and tense. There’s the dramatic telltale beat that lies in the negative space when he free-falls, when he flees from the chasing, nameless dread in the dark. 

There’s the wet rush of blood over an ultrasound that gets caught around his ankles and brings his dream-self down, drives his chin in the mud; but then there’s the strong, not-quite-steady but comforting pump that echoes around him, warm—he doesn’t know who it belongs to, but it’s a dream, that doesn’t matter, and it feels so fucking safe.

So yes. John’s intimately familiar with the human heart.

His own, for instance, in this moment, in the now: it’s a beast, really—a wild, aimless creature, rattling its cages; longing to get out. 

To _reach_.

 _Steady_ , John thinks, whispers wordless; this isn’t the first time it’s felt like this. 

It is the first time, though, the catalyst, the trigger: the reason for the thrumming and the shortage of air inside the room is so close. It’s the first time his heart’s been sucked to the surface by the lips that have teased it since that first glance in the lab.

“What the bloody hell was that?” 

He breathes it, forces it from his lungs because that’s the only choice, the only option he’s got. It’s already seeped too deep in the other places, the starker places: the parts of him that mean more. 

It’s had longer to settle, to set up shop, in the other places.

And Sherlock, of course: Sherlock blinks at him, owlish, with eyes that are narrow and wide all at once, bright and cold, calculating, a little bit lost and yet still so fucking superior John has to rein the urge to punch him, throttle him, put hands on his neck and touch, and stroke; maybe mirror, maybe reenact the suction, the lilting pulse of Sherlock’s tongue thrusting out against his throat with passion and purpose, frightening and thrilling and new—

Distracting. 

Sherlock’s still blinking. John still hasn’t got a response.

He’s pretty sure they both know that the question he’s asking isn’t the one he wants answered. Not really.

“Fine, well, right,” John concedes, swallows, sucks in air again and Sherlock’s not gone from the inhale: it’s oxygen and pheromones and that chemical-curried scent that overlays the cool menthol, the earthen sweetness Sherlock exudes, that sends John’s heart thumping full when he catches it, unannounced. “Belated maybe, but still,” he clears his throat, and Sherlock’s on his tongue still, too: musk and bitters, ginger and iron—the coarse sort of sugar that falls off sweets and settles at the bottom of the bag.

 _Jesus_.

“What in god’s name was that all about?” And John’s breathless, very; and his chest stings, feels too small. And yes, okay—yes: he can admit in his own head that what he’s really asking is something else, is more along the lines of _Tell me that’s what it felt like, tell me I can read you by now, tell me I’d know an experiment when I saw it, when it was licking down my neck, and tell me I’m right when I say that this wasn’t, this isn’t_.

He can admit that. Because when you’re John Watson, you’ve got to maintain a certain level of self-awareness. You’re only allowed a certain level of uselessness by the universe at large, and with a tremor and a limp; with a sore shoulder and a sister and fuck, but he’s tempting fate if he goes about adding wilful delusion to a list like that. At the very least: if he’s going to feel just a little bit faint where he sits and grasps the arms of the chair and feels motion where there is none, because his heart's rocketing that fierce beneath his ribs, well; if he’s going to get dizzy and draw blood from his palms with his own sodding fingernails, the least he can do is recognise _why_.

“One hundred and thirteen,” Sherlock murmurs, apropos of nothing—and that’s the best word for it, murmurs, because it’s low, rough, choked, a susurration like the rush of blood: amplified, untainted. 

“It’s not a fucking maths problem, you prat,” and John curses himself, curses biology and the circulatory system and the endocrine system and his fucking libido and everyone from Servetus to Freud for the way his whole body clenches and tingles and _burns_ , for the way his words are gasping, panting, even as he sits there, even as it’s just the image and the proximity that’s having an effect. 

“I asked what you think you’re playing at by,” John lets out a long breath, raises his hand to gesture appropriately, except he can’t, he doesn’t know how to properly mime _attacking me with your mouth out of nowhere_. “By the,” he swallows hard as he flaps his hand ineffectually at his own throat, his Adam’s apple working against the stray side of his hand in the process, and he shivers at the contact of his own skin against itself, the brush making him recall the lips, the teeth, the tongue, and fuck, _fuck_.

He shakes his head once, twice, closes his eyes. “And,” he starts, looks up and Sherlock who’s still zeroed in on John and John alone, those eyes unwavering, that attention fixed, and there goes John’s pulse again, fuck; not at that much faster, but harder—too hard.

“And the _kissing_ ,” he forces out, because Sherlock’s not moving, not saying anything; is responding to nothing, and John doesn’t know if he’s getting through, if he’s hallucinating, if he’s finally lost it entirely and Sherlock’s just observing, Jesus _Christ_ —

“One hundred and twenty-one.”

“Goddamnit, Sherlock, enough with the numbers,” John wants to yell it, to shout it at him, to be _angry_ as he has every right to be but for all of that, all he can manage is to let the words out on an exhale, something caught between a breath and a moan.

“Shh,” Sherlock frowns at him, eyes wide as he steps in, as he steps close again and leans into John where he sits; hesitates, as he reaches, but finally frames John’s face with his hands, those elegant fingers, rough skin on the palms and smooth at the wrists. 

“Relax, John, please,” and he says it like a prayer, almost, and John doesn’t understand it, doesn’t understand and doesn’t like being shushed and can’t think over the pounding in his chest that’s really far too hard and fast for the circumstances, isn’t it, because it’s just Sherlock and his violin and his lips and his hands and his _taste_ —

“ _Please_?” Sherlock asks, and John looks at him now, looks at his eyes and the fear in them, the concern and the way his pupils are enormous, inking into the grey-blue that’s not cool, just then, but vibrant, like the sky where the sun drains some of the colour as it shines too bright, and one-twenty-one, one-twenty-one: John breathes slowly, with purpose and watches something loosen in Sherlock’s gaze—the jump beneath his skin at the collarbone, and the neck receding: the one John hadn’t been watching but notices in his peripheral vision as soon as its gone.

Something in Sherlock gives way, then, and he stands straight to make up for it, to recoup the loss. 

“Looking,” he says, softly, and John furrows his brow; doesn’t get it.

Not that that’s new.

“I was looking,” Sherlock says again, impatient, but not irritated with John’s dimness, as he’d normally be. John can’t fight the quick stab of concern that shoot through him, unlooked for; much as he tries.

“I don’t know, John,” Sherlock shakes his head, tries again; spins on his heel and paces back toward John, hands steepled at his chin, head bowed. 

“I don’t _understand_ ,” and that’s the lynchpin, that’s what sheds light upon this entire anomalous, ridiculous encounter, at last. Sherlock Holmes _does not understand_.

John wishes he could feel just a little more flattered at that: at the fact that he, apparently, has stumped the great Detective himself. Mostly, though, he just feels sick in his gut and frustrated with the way he’d let himself hope, for just a moment under Sherlock’s mouth; the way his chest tightens and his heart rate drops a bit more, unfulfilled—retreating.

“I tried to understand, of course I tried,” Sherlock continues, babbles, rambles, moves back and forth with a mindless grace even as he’s coming apart at the seams. “I tried to grasp it, to dissect the layers, to parse the significance,” he swallows hard, so that John can hear it, can see it work down the line of his neck through the gap between his folded hands. “But I couldn’t, so I had to step back, I had to observe more carefully, find a case that I could solve.”

Sherlock whips around, agitated, uncontrolled, eyes burning and mouth open and his chest heaving and his skin slick in the low light and John feels the stirring at his groin growing ever more insistent, undeniable, despite how skilled he’s become at hiding it in moments like this, in the company he currently keeps.

Because fuck, he’s only human, and his heart’s a bloody masochistic mess. He can’t help but imagine those eyes, that skin, that chest, that _mouth_ in the same throes of disarray, under rather different circumstances.

“But John,” Sherlock whines, almost whimpers, and the fight drains out of him and pools to the floor, taking the brightness away, sluicing it off from the top on down. “John, there’s no _case_.”

John just blinks, and stares, because even with the light drained out of him, Sherlock’s a beacon, a sight to behold. 

“There’s so much,” Sherlock hisses, hateful and vengeful and a little bit terrified, John can hear that in him too and that unsettles John more than anything else because what frightens Sherlock Holmes is largely unfathomable. 

“There is too much and it’s impossible, it’s all impossible and there’s nothing improbable to fall back on so it’s just looking, just taking it in and recording and making nothing of it yet and that’s all there is,” he finally breaks for breath, gasps it in, and fuck what Sherlock says: watching his body move with the expansion of his lungs, watching his lips part: that’s not boring. 

It’s not boring at all. 

“That’s all that’s left, John, and it’s not making any difference because every time I think I’ve solved it, every time I think I’ve grasped the whole of you there’s more,” and Sherlock stops, frozen as he pauses mid-step, as his eyes flicker to John and all of him ceases, stills, and John has to wait a moment, has to process the information and do what he does best: try to find the simple route, the paths of least resistance that stretch beneath the notice of such a massive intellect, such a brilliant brain.

So John ponders touches, ponders contact and the numbers and the way a heart pumps; he thinks of Sherlock’s eyes and watching them, taking them in as discreetly as he dared for so many months, since almost the very start. He thinks of boring breathing and the way Sherlock’s would sometimes still, sometimes catch. He thinks of dilated pupils and the brush of fingers as he passes tea. He thinks being wrapped up in explosives like a bloody gift basket, thinks of the pick of Sherlock’s voice and the thrum of him so close as he’s torn the bombs away. He thinks of a warehouse and Sherlock’s face against his neck, chin dug just above John’s sternum, and how hard it was to pry him off, even many minutes after they were safe.

The routes he finds are madness, longing: John can’t be sure he trusts them yet.

 _But the **evidence**_ , a voice in him whispers: traitorous, tempting. _**The evidence**_ ; the evidence can’t lie. 

And John thinks maybe he gets, in a rudimentary sort of way: gets how it’s more than just a sound or a rhythm or the first indication of life versus death. No, he thinks he sees it starting to come together: it’s evidence, indicative. It suggests pathologies, or their absence. It implies a warm reception or a cold shoulder, gives testament to a great shag or...not. 

“Sherlock,” he starts, but there’s something in his tone, he knows it as soon as Sherlock’s expression darkens, twists; as soon as a snarl lets loose from those lips, that _tongue_ and he surges forward, a force of nature.

“Observe, god _damn_ you!” And then John’s hand is in Sherlock’s hand, clutched; and then John’s palm is on Sherlock’s chest, warm.

And then he feels it; feels it before he touches, even, it’s that vibrant. That strong.

And there it is, there it _is_ : that’s the centre of the great Consulting Detective under his fingertips, awake at his touch. That’s the world’s only heart of a madman, a genius; an idiot, a fiend and a friend. That’s the only heart in the universe that John would kill for because he needs it, that John would die for, just so it could simply be, just because John can’t imagine life without it’s infuriating, impossible, undeniable thrum. That’s the heart John _aches_ for. 

That’s the heart, unsteady—strong and safe—that plays and pumps, that dances in his dreams, and it is deeply, forcefully, frantically _throbbing_ in time, in sync with John’s own.

John can’t _breathe_.

And it’s funny, how it’s all so clear where it was muddled before, sharp where it was grey; it’s funny how it comes together so quickly, so easy now that his hand is held still, tight against the muscle as it moves.

John’s heart leaps and speeds just a little bit more, dangerous, overwhelmed, and Sherlock’s races immediate to follow, to match him, to keep him close and John’s eyes widen as his fingers clench at Sherlock’s sternum, look to grasp what’s already, impossibly, incredibly _his_.

“Right,” John whispers, nods, because it’s starting to come together, now, the lines are forming shapes at last. “Right.”

John’s still nodding, a little bit dazed, when Sherlock pulls away, agitated, unhinged; when he starts to pace and run shaking hands through his curls. John clasps his own hands together, for a moment, and feels the echo of the motion, the momentum in his chest as it shivers out to hid fingertips, and he wonders—sentimental—if it’s recollection or recognition, if it matters which heart’s in which chest, really, when it feels like this.

“You’re everywhere,” Sherlock tells him, declares it like the atomic mass of plutonium or the fact that Anderson is an irredeemable moron. “You’ve spread, you’ve sieved and soaked and percolated like a virus,” and John’s stung by that, frowns automatically, but it’s not stated with malice, not meant to cut: it’s bewildered and there’s a sharp edge to the words that John recognises, now, as fear. It’s liquor shivering in a glass and sweat at the hairline, and _Sherlock’s_ heartbeat at that long porcelain throat, and John wonders when it started, how long it’s been: wonders when his world started humming, his self started vibrating at the same frequency as Sherlock fucking Holmes.

“You’ve multiplied,” Sherlock’s still at it; “you’ve insinuated your very _essence_ into everything I know and everything I am,” and John’s listening, but now he’s watching too; now he’s studying, looking, observing even, because for all the brilliance he lacks, John’s bright, got a good head on his shoulders. And there are so many things in this world that he can piece together in an instant, can understand without much fuss that Sherlock can’t quite see through the haze of everything else.

“You’re the work, and you’re the music,” Sherlock’s eyes are wild, the colour of the skyline, just at the horizon, just before the sun sneaks back after rain. “You’re morning tea and triple homicides and you’re not clever, really, but you’re clever _ness_ , and that’s absurd, John, that’s _absurd_.” Sherlock is breathless, and John’s breathless too, and his heart’s not just a drum in his chest, it’s a mallet, it’s a hummingbird, it’s a child in the cold and it’s desperate and keening and ready to burst, and it’s frightened and fragile but it’s so fucking strong.

It’s strong, _he’s_ strong, and John watches Sherlock tremble just beyond noticing; and John himself can’t see it but he feels it in his veins, and he wants to reach out but not yet, not yet; if he closes his eyes he can feel, imagine, touch and taste the added depth, the resonance of each beat with something else, something other, something vibrant that splits him in half just to remake him whole.

“You’re the way my lungs work and you’re the blood cells and the marrow,” Sherlock chokes, whispers, and he’s stopped, arrested mid-quiver and John’s balanced on the brink of all the world’s longing as he sucks in air, deliberate, scarce; as he inhales and exhales and thinks of Sherlock, stares at Sherlock while his lungs fill so full they ache, while his heart beats the CO2 out in sloppy, arterial spurts. 

“You’ve permeated,” Sherlock tells him, steps closer again and says it like a secret, a confession to a god that’s more the divinity of belief; that’s all things and unending, that is destruction and derision and heartened-hateful-hope. “You’ve leeched the whole way through and it’s too late, and I don’t, I don’t,” Sherlock flails, starts to diminish, and John won’t have it, he can’t.

He’s on his feet and his hands are on Sherlock’s hands within an instant; their shaking at matching intervals, their fingers seeking—simultaneous, unasked—for the radial pulse.

“You don’t what?” John asks, voice soft, hesitant, and god, please let this be true.

“I don’t—” Sherlock shivers when John runs his fingers, just a lilting touch across the veins of his forearm, the median, basilic, cephalic, just a touch, and he feels the rush of heat, trails his flesh against the pulse as it deepens, quickens, _rises_ , and yes, yes, he gets it: _evidence_. 

“The words, John,” Sherlock breathes out, the syllables shaky, and John’s close enough to feel it. “The words are dreadfully inadequate.”

“It’s fine,” John tells him, assures him, because it is, all of it, and it always was even before this, even before John’s heart is aching and pounding for a whole host of new reasons, overfull with yearning and feeling and a passionate need he’d been so sure would never know release.

“How?” Sherlock asks, and it’s more than it seems, it’s _How is it fine?_ and _How can you know?_ It’s _How are you here?_ and _How is this real?_ and _If there are no words, if the words don’t fit, how can you be sure that you understand what it is that’s here in me, keeping me, killing me, driving me mad?_ and John is grateful, he’s so fucking grateful, because he hears it all, he reads it all in Sherlock’s eyes and the spectacular, incomparable swell of his heartbeat at the throat, and John doesn’t fight it anymore, slides a gentle thumb along the beat as he leans up and presses Sherlock’s mouth against his own.

Because some things exceed words, John knows; but the _feeling_ more than fills the gap.


End file.
